NETGEAR EVA9150 Digital Entertainer Elite

Other products by Netgear

Product Details

User Manual [1.48mb PDF]

• Product Dimensions: 17 x 10 x 2 inches ; 10.2 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 11 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B001P80FGA
• Item model number: EVA9150
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: January 7, 2009

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

The NETGEAR Digital Entertainer Elite HD EVA9000 series (EVA9150 includes 500GB hard drive) connects your TV and home entertainment system to your computer network, letting you experience your high-definition videos, digital music, and photos on your HDTV and high-quality sound system, directly from your PC. The Digital Entertainer Elite also makes it possible to enjoy streaming media from the Internet--such as YouTube, Internet radio, Flickr photos, RSS feeds, and podcasts -- through your HDTV and home entertainment system.

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View Product Tour.

The NETGEAR EVA9150 makes it easy to watch HD media from your computer on an HDTV. View larger.

The included remote lets you control your media from the comfort of your couch. View larger.

A slim design and versatile, fast connectivity make it easy to integrate into your network. View larger.

Watch 1080p Media on Your HDTV from the Integrated Hard Drive or Your PC
You've downloaded your favorite shows and movies from the Internet, and you've got hours of home video stored on your computer. Thanks to the Digital Entertainer Elite, you no longer have to restrict your viewing to your computer; you can now watch your digital collection in the comfort of your television room, directly on your HDTV.

The Digital Entertainer Elite can also stream videos and feeds from the Internet to your HDTV, bypassing your computer entirely, for the ultimate viewing experience. And best of all, you can enjoy your videos and photos in full high definition of up to 1080p, thanks to the system's automatic up-converting feature.

Huge Hard Drive for Storage
With an integrated 500 GB hard drive, the Digital Entertainer Elite can even store your digital media, making it one of the world’s largest video jukeboxes. You no longer have to store your movies and photos on your computer's hard drive--it will do that for you, letting you free up space on your computer.

The hard drive also allows you to watch your videos, even when your computer is off, and buffers streamed videos, so even if your network performance is inconsistent, you still enjoy glitch-free video. You could also choose to install a larger Hard Drive (standard SATA) for even more storage capability in the future (go to www.netgear.com/eva9000drive for Hard Drive compatibility list).

USB Connectivity
For added versatility, the Digital Entertainer Elite sports two easily accessible USB ports for instant access to content via USB flash drives, digital cameras, iPods, or any other USB storage device. This means you can upload your digital content directly to the Digital Entertainer Elite.

Push 'N' Connect Wireless Technology
NETGEAR's exclusive Push 'N' Connect wireless technology provides an easy way for the user to connect to a WPS-secured wireless network with a simple push of a button. With Push 'N' Connect, you don’t need to key in long and complex wireless passwords. And it is dual band wireless-N compatible, so you get the fastest WiFi connection possible at speeds of up to 300 Mbps when coupled with a Wireless-N router.

Plays a Wide Variety of Formats
The Digital Entertainer Elite offers compatibility with a wide range of formats, far more than Apple TV, Media Center Extender, Xbox 360, and other competitors offer. It supports video formats--such as AVI, DivX, WMV, MOV, and more--and audio formats--such as MP3, WMA, DTS 5.1, DTS-HD Master Audio, AAC, and more. The Digital Entertainer Elite also supports 40 Mbps bit rates, providing you with the best quality audio/video possible.

Energy Efficient Design
The Digital Entertainer Elite is a NETGEAR Green product, so you know you're getting an eco-friendly product. Its efficient power supply and automatic power-saving mode consumes as little as 0.01 watts of power.

Need More Storage?
If you are a media enthusiast and have more video than one hard disk drive can hold, the Digital Entertainer Elite works seamlessly with NETGEAR’s ReadyNAS DUO, NV+, and Pro products. Just dump all of your HD Videos on the ReadyNAS, and stream directly to the Digital Entertainer, it's as simple as that.

Compatible with Windows (including Vista), Macintosh, and Linux computers the Digital Entertainer Elite measures 2.0 x 17 x 10 inches (HxWxD) and weighs 5.56 pounds. It's backed by NETGEAR's one-year warranty.

What's in the Box
Digital Entertainer Elite (EVA9150), 4-device Universal Infrared (IR) Remote Control (2 AA batteries included), power cable, localized to the country of sale, Ethernet cable, RCA stereo-audio/composite-video cable, HDMI cable, installation guide, Windows/Macintosh (Intel-based OS-X) resource CD, and warranty/support information card.

Related NETGEAR Products to Enhance Your Digital Entertainer Elite Experience
NETGEAR ReadyNAS Duo, 1 X 1000 GB (RND2110) Award-winning Network Attached Storage device with up to 1 TB of storage and GigaBit Ethernet for fast data transfer Stream music, photos and video to the Digital Entertainer Elite Experience and other network media players without a computer Access files from anywhere via Internet connection; Web- and print-server capabilities		Netgear ReadyNAS Pro Pioneer Edition Network Attached Storage (RNDP600E) Advanced Network Attached Storage device; X-RAID2 technology and industry standard RAID 0/1/5/8 for superb data protection Stream music, photos and video to the Digital Entertainer Elite Experience and other network media players without a computer Access files from anywhere via Internet connection; Web- and print-server capabilities
NETGEAR Wireless-N Router (WNR2000) Wireless-N router offers significant speed and performance improvements over Wireless-G Works with older Wireless-G devices and new Wireless-N devices Push 'N' Connect features simplifies set-up process; no need to remember complicated security keys or passwords		NETGEAR RangeMax Wireless-N Gigabit Router (WNR3500) Wireless-N router offers significant speed and performance improvements over Wireless-G Built-in Ultra Fast 4-port Gigabit switch for even faster network performance Automatic Quality of Service (QoS) ensures reliable Internet, voice, video, and gaming applications Easy secured set-up with Push 'N' Connect using WiFi Protected Set-up (WPS)
NETGEAR Powerline AV Ethernet Adapter Kit (XAVB101) Convert your home's existing electrical wiring into a high-speed network connection Plug and play installation requires no software Delivers up to 200 Mbps throughput for high-bandwidth applications; 28-bit encryption for extra security		NETGEAR RangeMax Wireless-N Gigabit Router (WNR3500) Turns any coaxial outlet into a high-speed Ethernet connection for convenient networking Supports uninterrupted HD video, gaming, and high-speed networking for use with HDTV or gaming systems Provides transfer speeds of up to 270 Mbps and integrated data encryption for secure file transfers

Product Description

Netgear Eva9150

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good unit that plays almost every format!, April 20, 2009

By	Phil Baumert (Louisville, KY) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Amazon Verified Purchase

This is a pretty cool unit. Setup is a breeze and it even came with a DVI cable to hook up to my TV. It also has RCA cables. I have almost 1TB of movies in various formats(.avi .wmv .mpg) and it plays every one. Sometimes I cannot use the skip function if it doesn't fully support the file but it still always plays it. Transferring the files over was a bit harder. It was going to take 7 days to copy 1TB of files over from my server to the hard drive on the unit that I put in it. I even tried a direct cable and it was just as slow. I don't think it does any conversion but it is very slow. When you add a new hard drive in this unit, it formats it with Linux. When I put the drive from the Digital Entertainer in my Windows server it wanted to format the drive. I had to boot into a Linux OS and then I was able to copy the files over very quickly. The software that comes with the unit is pretty nice also. It lets you tag each movie file with information from the Internet Movie Database. It even displays a box cover. This unit also stores and plays music as well as Youtube videos streaming from the Internet. It will connect to your network by wireless or wired, or it can simply be a standalone unit. The only reason I didn't give it 5 stars was because of the search feature in the unit. When I want to search for example, the movie "Zoolander", I input the letter "Z" from the remote and instead of filtering every movie that starts with "Z", it lists every movie with the letter "Z" in it like this...

American Zombie
Brazil
Crazy People
Dazed and Confused
Hot Fuzz
Zoolander

It's kind of a convoluted search in my opinion. Other than that, the Digital Entertainer is a top notch unit. It has a very user friendly interface with a nice remote control. It also has 2 USB ports and it can play media directly off of those or the media can be transferred to the hard drive. Netgear did a good job on the Digital Entertainer Elite!

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Almost perfect..., April 29, 2009

By	B. Campbell (Richmond, VA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Let me start by saying I was NOT looking for a Windows Media Center Extender, I was looking for a device that could handle my library of stored media (movies and music), especially it's ability to play DVD images, including the disc menus. For this purpose (provided you have a wireless N or wired network connection) the EVA-9150 is a solid choice, handling virtually any file format you can throw at it without problems. The Digital Entertainer Elite also streams Internet radio stations, and has a nifty RSS feed reading applet built-in.

An application is included that does a decent job of helping you catalog your media library, including tools to help facilitate the creation of tags for media files. My favorite feature in this by far is the ability to go pre-fill a tag with information from IMDB: just go to the page for the movie, click the "fill" button, and all of the information about the movie populates the appropriate fields!

The EVA-9150 includes a 500GB hard drive, but unless your home network is slow and you're having buffering problems, I doubt it would be of much use. If it is, you can swap it out for drives of up to 1TB in size.

Output options are plentiful, including HDMI, component and digital outputs, as well as standard composite and analog audio, so interfacing to virtually any home theater system is realatively easy. Wireless and wired networking are built in and easy to use, and software is included to help you catalog the media on the various devices you may have around your house. Overall, I found everything relatively easy to use for a person familar with PCs and home theater, though the sheer number of options may be intimidating to a novice.

One place where there's room for improvement is the 9150's ability to play various forms of streaming video from the Internet. Netgear will be releasing a firmware upgrade later this year that will allow the EVA-9150 to stream video from providers such as Amazon, Netflix and Hulu using a service called PlayOn that streams these and other services from your PC.

Another sticking point for some users of this unit is it's rather paltry support for Blu-ray file formats. For example, the unit can't read an image of a Blu-ray disk that's stored on hard drive, you can only play back the main movie file, and even then the unit doesn't currently support pass-thru of Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD signal to your home theater system. While Netgear is working on these issues, it's unclear as to when a fix might be coming out. (I'd recommend a TivX 7000 for those who want this capability, but their spec sheet sports a similar "to be supported in a future release" quote for TrueHD and DTS-HD support.)

As Netgear adds more capabilities to this unit with each firmware upgrade, they'll have a device that will be harder and harder to beat. For now, they merely have the best way I've found to make media stored on PCs, Macs and network attached storage devices playable on your home theater system.

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Almost a great product, yet nowhere near it..., June 30, 2009

By	J. Berardi (NJ) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The ever-changing list of specifications for this product is useless. As of this writing (6/30), the specs still indicate that the unit supports True-HD, which is does not, in any way, shape or form. That is confirmed by Netgear technical support. The problem is, many Blu-Ray movies, which is the format this $400 player seems geared to play, are encoded in TrueHD and therefore have no audio. Although it serves as a decent stored DVD player, the lack of 100% BluRay support is rediculous. As mentioned elsewhere, the remote control is not user-friendly at all, and could use a significant make-over.

The incorrect specifications will probably lead me to return the unit within my 30 days unless there's a new firmware with a LOT of fixes. Personally, I'm severely disappointed in Netgear releasing a product under false advertising and horrible beta testing, but a little research led me to realize it's a trend with Netgear Media Players, including the EVA8000. I hope I see a big improvement within 3 weeks, otherwise this thing goes back.

Also, for those looking at this piece as a Control4 dealer, the C4 driver works okay at best, and needs some tweaks before it could be presented to a client.